Venom Gun Project Book
The Venom Gun Project Book is a document found in Return to Castle Wolfenstein mission The Bombed Factory, about a Nazi secret weapon called the "Venom gun", a devastating minigun-like weapon. To obtain the book is one of the necessary objectives of the mission. A usable item, it can be selected using the item keys. It is not consumed on use and can be used as many times as the player wishes. Using it allows the player to read the following: Overview The Venom Gun Project Book is TECHNICAL OVERVIEW GP-VG MK2 Nomenclature: GP-VG MK2 (Venom Gun) Caliber: 7.92 mm (Saboted light armor piercing rounds required for proper feed) Operation: Electrically operated, locked breech system with six barrels and bolts; rotating bolt heads with dual locking surfaces. Feed Mechanism: Gear driven feeder/delinker with two-piece hinged hatch with standard GPMG disintegrating links. Cyclic Rate: 2,000 RPM. Operational Specifics: The GP-VG MK2 Venom Gun is electrically operated and utilizes a locking-breech system with six barrels and six bolts. The barrels rotate counter clockwise and fire in turn when they reach the 12' o-clock position. The breech mechanism features a rotating bolt head with two locking surfaces (similar to MG34 GPMG). The bolt subassembly features a helical tang on the bolt head which mates with a helical groove on bolt body. Rotation into the battery is clockwise with the bolt rotating around the firing pin holding entire bolt assembly together. The bolt head itself locks into recesses in the rotor (the main structural component of the gun) while the barrel interfaces with the front of the rotor. A roller on top of the bolt subassembly, moving in an elliptical cam path in the receiver housing, drives the bolt forward. A flat dwell profile in the cam path holds the bolt locked briefly until the bullet has traveled past the muzzle and the pressure has dropped to a safe level. Pins in the bolt head interface with the cam surfaces on the firing pin and cause the striker to rotate with the head. After the extraction and the ejection, the bolt has completed a 360-degree cycle and is positioned to pick up another round. All six bolts repeat this identical process in sequence. Original Design Problems and Construction Notes: The six barrels are held to the front of the rotor by an integral interrupted flange on one side of each barrel that requires a 180-degree turn for retention. All of the barrels are prevented from rotating out of their retained positions by a barrel clamp which mates with four flanges on the front of each barrel. This clamp is held in place by a single bolt. Originally a 1/4 inch steel bolt was threaded to a self-locking nut. This nut all too frequently wore so badly that the clamp was shot off the gun. We now use a 5/16 inch bolt screwed into a castellated nut, locked in place by a cotter pin. Off-center firing pin strikes were also a major problem in the beginning. As the bolt head moves forward into battery, just prior to rotation it looses all alignment guidance, which was provided by machined lobes on the rotor. This allowed the bolt head to wander off-center, resulting in off-center firing pin strikes. We have recently manufactured a new rotor which holds it's tolerances much closer than encountered on the original version. The feeder/delinker represented the single greatest problem in the original design. Whenever a belt restriction occurred (a rather common event) the belt would slew sideways while entering the delinker and one of the stripper teeth would literally pierce the cartridge case, resulting in massive stoppage. As the feeder/delinker components were encased in a solid outer housing, only by removing the feeder/delinker system from the gun and disassembling it, using a pry bar to force the gears around, could clear the stoppage. This was a major project that took at least 20 minutes. To alleviate the situation we have installed a hinged hatch on the feeder/delinker housing for easier access. Since it's a two piece unit, the hatch also permits placing the belt by hand into the proper position for firing, just like a standard belt fed machine gun's top cover (in fact, the hinged locking latch on the hatch was taken directly from the American's .50 caliber Browning machine gun's top cover). Final Analysis: We have recently completed 3 separate 100,000 round tests with the improved GP-VG MK2 Venom Gun. The results were phenomenal. There was only one stoppage, which was cleared in a matter of seconds. As directed, the Venom Gun is ready for deployment and is the most precisely directed and most devastating small arm weapon currently available anywhere in the world. Notes *Despite the book states that the weapon uses a 7.92mm SLAP round, in game the ammo is stated to be 12.7mm (.50 calibre). *The manual appears to be paraphrased from one or more real-life documents related to the American M134 Minigun, and includes references to shortcomings of older variants. In particular the note about the solid housing of the feeder/delinker is related to the no-longer-used MAU-56 feeder/delinker for the M134, which had this exact issue. A version with a hinged access cover was indeed later developed. *Another piece of evidence in this regard is that the manual mentions inch-based bolt sizes, while Germany actually was using exclusively metric system by that time. pl:Projekt Venoma Category:Return to Castle Wolfenstein documents Category:Return to Castle Wolfenstein Category:Items Category:Return to Castle Wolfenstein items